Over the last decade chemokines have emerged as key mediators of inflammation as a result of their numerous proinflammatory activities which affect virtually every leukocyte type. More recently, chemokines have been recognized as a critical component of basal leukocyte trafficking essential for normal immune surveillance and response, as well as for several other functions in hematopoiesis, angiogenesis, control of viral infection, and T cell differentiation (Baggiolini et al., Ann. Rev. Immunol. 15:675 (1997); Zou et al., Nature 393:595 (1998); Tachibana et al., Nature 393:591 (1998)). This diverse array of biological activities, including mediation of a range of pro-inflammatory effects on leukocytes, such as triggering of chemotaxis, degranulation, synthesis of lipid mediators, and integrin activation, together with their critical role in the initiation and maintenance inflammatory diseases, and the recent identification of certain chemokine receptors as co-receptors for HIV-1 entry, have made chemokines and chemokine receptors an attractive new set of therapeutic targets.
Members of the chemokine family are produced and secreted by many cell types in response to early inflammatory mediators such as IL-1β or TNFα. The chemokine superfamily comprises two main branches: the α-chemokines (or CXC chemokines) which are characterized by a single amino acid separating the first 2 cysteines, and the β-chemokines (CC chemokines), which contain two adjacent cysteines. The α-chemokine branch includes proteins such as IL-8, neutrophil activating peptide-2 (NAP-2), melanoma growth stimulatory activity (MGSA/gro or GROα), and ENA-78, each of which have attracting and activating effects predominantly on neutrophils. The members of the β-chemokine branch affect other cell types such as monocytes, lymphocytes, basophils, and eosinophils (Oppenheim, J. J. et al., Annu. Rev. Immunol., 9:617–648 (1991); Baggiolini, M., et al., Adv. Imunol., 55:97–179 (1994); Miller and Krangel, Crit. Rev. Immunol., 12:17–46 (1992); Jose, P. J., et al., J. Exp. Med., 179:881–118 (1994); Ponath, P. D., et al., J. Clin. Invest., 97:604–612 (1996)), and include proteins such as monocyte chemotactic proteins 1–4 (MCP-1, MCP-2, MCP-3, and MCP-4), RANTES, macrophage inflammatory proteins (MIP-1α, MIP-1β), thymus and activation-regulated chemokine (TARC; Imai et al., J. Biol. Chem. 271:21514–21521 (1996)) and macrophage-derived chemokine (MDC; Godiska et al., J. Exp. Med. 185:1595–1604 (1997)).
Chemokines bind to 7 transmembrane spanning G protein-coupled receptors (Murphy, P. M., Annu. Rev. Immunol., 12:593–633 (1994)). A number of β chemokine receptors (CCR1–CCR10) have been identified to date, and the search for additional chemokine receptors is the subject of active research (Baggiolini, Nature 392:565–568 (1998)). Chemokine receptor CCR4 was identified by Power et al. (J. Biol. Chem. 270:19495–19500 (1995); Genbank accession number X85740) and Meyer et al. (J. Biol. Chem. 271(24):14445–14451 (1996); Genbank accession number X94151). A murine homolog of human CCR4 has also been identified (Youn et al., Blood 89(12):4448–4460 (1997)). CCR4 was originally found to signal in response to MCP-1, MIP-1α, and RANTES but more recently has been shown to be specific for the chemokines TARC and MDC (Imai et al., J. Biol. Chem. 272(23):15036–15042 (1997); Imai et al., J. Biol. Chem. 278:1764–1768 (1998)).
The selective recruitment of leukocyte subsets to sites of inflammation and the ordered trafficking of leukocytes through the circulation, tissues, lymphatic system and secondary lymphoid organs is controlled in part by the differential expression of chemokine receptors on subsets of cells. Such expression patterns would seem to ensure that a functionally related group of leukocytes can coordinately respond to a specific set of chemokines induced by a given stimulus. For T cells, PCR or Northern blotting indicates that the known receptors for CC chemokines are expressed on subsets of T cells. Delineating exactly which subsets express particular receptors is an area of intense study, because chemokine receptor expression may explain the localization or migration of various cell types, such as TH1 or TH2 T cells or tissue homing subsets. It may also determine which T cells are infected with different strains of HIV-1. However, most leukocytes express several chemokine receptors, many with complex and promiscuous ligand interactions. This makes elucidating the normal immune function for a specific receptor on a given cell type and determining the relevance to initiation and progression of disease difficult, especially since specific antibodies are not available for many chemokine receptors.